Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 105, Issue 48, Pages 18953-18957Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0808035105
Keywords
cell wall; Cryo-EM; sacculus; tomography; cell shape
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [R01 A1067548, P50 GM082545]
- Searle Scholar Award
- Beckman Institute at Caltech
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Agouron Institute
- Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation [DRG-1940-07]
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The stress-bearing component of the bacterial cell wall-a multi-gigadalton bag-like molecule called the sacculus-is synthesized from peptidoglycan. Whereas the chemical composition and the 3-dimensional structure of the peptidoglycan subunit (in at least one conformation) are known, the-architecture of the assembled sacculus is not. Four decades' worth of biochemical and electron microscopy experiments have resulted in two leading 3-D peptidoglycan models: Layered and Scaffold, in which the glycan strands are parallel and perpendicular to the cell surface, respectively. Here we resolved the basic architecture of purified, frozen-hydrated sacculi through electron cryotomography. In the Gram-negative sacculus, a single layer of glycans lie parallel to the cell surface, roughly perpendicular to the long axis of the cell, encircling the cell in a disorganized hoop-like fashion.
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